Remember...

Ancestral energy lives in the stars above us, the stones beneath us. Their memory gathers in oceans, rivers and seas. It hums its silent wisdom within the body of every tree.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

My Grandma Pat is Dying


I laid two candles down.

I have a book she gave me that she said was too complicated for her, about religious archaeologists. I put it on the altar.

I poured out a glass of water.

I am Sarah,
daughter of Margaret,
daughter of Patricia,
daughter of Margaret,
daughter of Eliza,
daughter of Mary,
daughter of Irish mothers unknown.

I struck match to metal and lit one wick.
I called in my grandmother’s ancestors.
I called her mother Margaret Loretta Burke.
I called her father Robert Joseph Art.

I called out the names of her mother’s Irish ancestors:
Frank Burke and Eliza Conners,
Thomas and Ellen Burke,
David Conners and Mary Dowd,
Mrs. Ann Burke,
Barney Dowd.

I called out the names of her father’s German ancestors:
George Art and Katherine Pills,
Adam and Catherine Art,
John Pils and Mary Burzee,
George Arth and Wilhemina Wernersbach.

I asked them to watch over her, and to welcome her when she is ready to move on.

I lit the second candle. I asked them to watch over those of us who are afraid to let her go.

I spent the time it took the candles to burn down reading the book she gave me, connecting in to her Hospice bed across the miles. I spent my time reading also connecting into the thread of her that lives in me.

And breathing.


[A look into how I use my ancestor work in practical applications.]

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Why We Funeral


The day before Easter, my Uncle Norm died. He was my dad’s younger brother. He lived directly across the street from me. His was the second sibling death in the family in three years. And it hurts.           
And even in dealing with this grief, another death is looming. And my heart feels like it’s drowning. What do you do when you’re drowning? You focus on one small thing at a time to get yourself above water.
Everyone else’s lives continue at a frantic pace but you are stuck simply trying to remember how to breathe.
I don’t live in the same place as my family. It makes death hard. I don’t have my own vehicle, and I haven’t been able to drive distances since my accident. My recovery also makes public transportation difficult. For now I have no choice but to grieve from here. Here, where no one else knew the people I lose from home, where no one else can or will grieve with me.
For a moment, I wish professional keening was still a cultural thing. I could hire a handful of women to bring over casseroles and cry with me and let me tell them my complicated stories.
We still don’t really talk about grief. Not outside of wearing black while standing inside funeral parlors. My mom had a funeral outfit. I remember the nights she would come home from work and get dressed up in that blouse and those slacks, with hose and heels and make-up. Sometimes a friend would come over and they would go pay their respects together for an hour or so.
I remember. But what I didn’t see was that grief is hard. I sit on that edge uncertain as to whether or not I am grieving the loss of them or the loss of the relationship I will now never-get-a-chance-to-have. Maybe it’s both. It’s probably both.
I think the beginning of grief is largely uncertainty.

One of my first jobs besides babysitting was getting paid to sing at weddings and funerals. Singing at funerals is so surreal when the families are unknown to you. You need to be both a comfort and a catharsis.
The main aspect of a funeral is to lay the body, the sacred vessel of the beloved dead to rest based on their wishes. It’s a way of capping the respect and affection you had for them. It’s a way to wrap up the end of their story.
And that’s great.
[I do think that there will be a tipping point where we have to be accountable for the ecological impact the way we dispose of our dead, of the carcasses left behind. I think that point has already come. No more chemicals. No more sealed vaults. Our bodies were meant to decay in the earth and feed the soil. So we have to change our relationship with death. And our bodies. And how we connect soul/spirit/anima to flesh.]

Mostly funerals are for those left behind to grief. It’s a place we’re allowed to grieve. The coming together of family and loved ones is a soothing balm. You’re not the only one who feels like time stopped. You get to share funny stories and poignant stories, about what a good person they were or lament the loss of time to smooth the broken edges of your relationship. And in some way the ritual should serve those who gather together.
I think about this a lot. The funerals I have been to that were officiated by someone who did not know my beloved dead were laughable. They were bordering on farce—as if the officiant had never performed a funeral before. But the ones I have attended, led by someone who could keep themselves composed, but who had love for the dead were brilliant and moving and beautiful and stirred the ghost of them in me.
I take notes as I grieve. Connection matters. Without connection we are just flesh. So we come together to grieve to make it real. To reconnect a new reality to an old one. If everyone is grieving they are truly gone. When we know that whether or not anyone grieves a death, they are truly gone.
I regret missing my Uncle Dave’s funeral. I know I’ll regret missing my Uncle Norm’s as well. But this time I am not well or fit for travelling. So I gather up my thoughts and I request them to make sense.
I’m still trying to figure out how to grieve alone from hundreds of miles away.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Nine Years After the Gunfire

Photo by David Marsland, with permission through Creative Commons 

It started at 10:30 in the morning. 

It was Friday April 3, 2009. We were getting ready to go work downtown for First Friday. We heard the helicopters low overhead. We lived a few blocks away from the American Civic Association, where a gunman had blocked the rear exit of the building with his father’s truck and then entered the front door firing.

His name was Jiverly Wong and that is the only attention I shall give him.

He didn’t speak. He just fired bullets. He stepped into an ESL class and shot thirteen of the sixteen people in there. He made hostages of students from other classrooms. Police arrived quickly and at the sounds of the alarms, the gunman shot himself.

It was 10:33 am. He fired 88 rounds from a 9mm Beretta. He fired 11 rounds from a .45-caliber Beretta.

A wounded receptionist, Shirley DeLucia, 61, crawled under the desk and called 911. She stayed on the phone for almost 40 minutes, relaying information as it was happening to the police, at which point the SWAT team entered. They didn’t know the shooter was dead. They found two more semi-automatic pistols on his body.

By 2:33 it was over and the American Civic Association was empty. The streets were not. As I made my way through them—I wasn’t even thinking about getting across the bridge—my city was in mourning. Families were grieving together, openly weeping. It’s still hard for me to think about. It was overwhelming.

In four hours my city was changed, forever altered. I could feel it on the street, covered in news vans and dressed-up reporters from every channel I had ever heard of and a few I hadn’t. We don’t forget. Every time another mass shooting happens we remember. Every time a mass shooting happens, every survivor is thrown back into the moment where they thought their lives were about to end.

At the time, it was the largest number of deaths due to a single-person mass shooting. It saddens me to think that there have been so many that we don't remember them all. And sadder yet to think that because they weren't young, white school children, we are often one that goes unremembered.

This is not a competition. There is no competition in death. In death, everyone loses. But there are tender truths revealed in how we respond. They should all be remembered.

As I finish this, it is 2:33 in the afternoon and I honor those whose lives were lost that day, nine years ago. It cuts a little deeper this year, considering the current tone of our country concerning immigrants. What makes us different makes us stronger:

  • Almir Olimpio Alves, 43, a Brazilian Ph.D. in Mathematics, a visiting scholar at Binghamton University, attending English classes at the Civic Association
  • Dolores Yigal, 53, a recent immigrant from the Philippines 
  • Hai Hong Zhong, 54, an immigrant from China
  • Hong Xiu "Amy" Mao Marsland, 35, a nail technician, immigrated from China in 2006
  • Jiang Ling, 22, an immigrant from China
  • Lan Ho, 39, an immigrant from Vietnam
  • Layla Khalil, 53, an Iraqi mother of three children
  • Li Guo, 47, a visiting scholar from China
  • Marc Henry Bernard, 44, an immigrant from Haiti 
  • Maria Sonia Bernard, 46, an immigrant from Haiti
  • Maria Zobniw, 60, a part-time caseworker at the Civic Association, whose parents were from Ukraine 
  • Parveen Ali, 26, an immigrant from northern Pakistan 
  • Roberta King, 72, an English language teacher substituting for a teacher on vacation, who was a local substitute for many years

Just down Front Street, the American Civic Association Park has a memorial to the thirteen victims, showing thirteen doves in flight that shine as lights at night, as seen in the accompanying photo.

May we all be reminded that violence is a choice. Choose love. Choose kindness. Choose life.
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